Binance to Make Listing Fees Transparent, Give Proceeds to Charity

Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, said that it will make new cryptocurrency listing fees transparent and donate 100 percent of those fees to charity.

The exchange made the announcement today, October 8, 2018, in a blog post where it stated that a listing fee would now be more appropriately called a “donation.”

Listing fees have been a pain point for cryptocurrency projects. Projects depend on getting their coins listed on exchanges for liquidity. News of getting listed on a major exchange can cause a coin to spike in value overnight. Yet, many projects have complained of exorbitant listing fees.

In April 2018, Bloomberg reported that according to Autonomous Research some crypto trading platforms were charging $1 million to $3 million to list a token — 10 times more than what a traditional exchange, like Nasdaq, demands for securities.

Binance, which now handles most of its operations out of Malta, has been a target of many of those complaints. In August 2018, Christopher Franko, co-founder of Expanse, a fork of Ethereum, tweeted that Binance wanted to charge 400 bitcoin ($2.5 million) to list a coin. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao refuted the accusation. “We don’t list shitcoins even if they pay 400 or 4,000 BTC,” he tweeted.

Now, according to Binance, cryptocurrency projects will be able to name their price. “Binance will not dictate a number, nor is there a minimum required listing fee,” the exchange said, adding that it won’t be swayed by larger bids either. “A large donation does not guarantee or in any way influence the outcome of our listing review process.”

Once the two parties reach an agreement, the exchange said it will disclose the fee via its charity arm Blockchain Charity Foundation. Binance launched the arm in Malta in July 2018 as a way to funnel some of its profits to philanthropic endeavors. The foundation is chaired by Helen Hai, a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Industrial Development Organization.

Binance was originally founded in Hong Kong in 2017. Within six months, it was already touted as one of the biggest crypto exchanges in the space. Its growth is largely due to its ability to onboard new coins quickly. The exchange currently has 387 crypto-to-crypto trading pairs.